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Oh, Christmas break. I spend the entire semester at school, just waiting for you to arrive, and before you know it, here you are, and here I am, twiddling my thumbs, looking for something to do. What does one DO over Christmas break, anyway? I mean, there’s externships for the extra-ambitious… part-time seasonal jobs for the good kids who just want to help pay their way through college… I’ve been home for a week, and what have I done? Well. I’ve made my way through Season 1 of 30 Rock (ridiculous, I know! And kind of impressive too, right? Right?), and now I am working on the rest of my monthlong baking bonanza!

This baking bonanza will include: testing out different icing/frosting recipes, testing out different cake recipes, testing out decorating methods, and so forth… Very exciting times ahead, my friend.

Before I jump into the cake experiments, though, I wanted to try out this recipe that I’ve been eyeing for the past few weeks.

Bakerella’s cake balls are supposed to be a really easy treat to make. And I’m sure they are. But if you know anything about me… Well, let’s just say I am extremely capable of botching things up in ways unimaginable.

Really classy-looking spice cake. It looks really professional and nice.

In her recipe, Bakerella says to crumble the cake into a large bowl, so I crumbled. Oh, did I crumble. By the end of the whole shebang, my spice cake was little more than a bowl of delicious crumb-y dust. To anyone who plans to make these: You should know that the smaller the crumbs are, the stickier and more integrated your mixture will be once you add the frosting. Which means you should either use less frosting (yeah, do NOT go ahead and dump the whole can of frosting into the bowl like I did… bad idea), or you should be a little less meticulous in the pulverizing of your cake.

I had to refrigerate my cake mixture to let it firm up a bit because I was rolling it with my hands, and I started getting cake glove (this isn’t an actual baking term, as far as I know). I would recommend using a mini spring-loaded ice cream scoop next time.

For the next batch (I only dipped 17 of these things in chocolate, so I have 40-something more left over), I’m going to try to dry out the cake a little more. Maybe stick some in the oven, so it’s less “cat food-bleh-mush” (blehhhh-mushh. Blemish?) and more springy. I’ll do that and report back to you here.

Oh… yeah, I couldn’t find chocolate bark at Publix, and I had a ton of semi-sweet chocolate chips at home, so I figured, oh, maybe I could just use that instead, and it’d be just fine; I would just melt my little chocolate chips in the microwave, and they’d turn into liquid goodness. Um. They did not. In fact, they turned into quite the opposite — non-liquid hot mess. It was more ganache-like consistency than anything else, except after a while, the chocolate started seizing up. (I’m chalking that up to steam sneaking out of my makeshift double boiler.) Next time, either use chocolate bark, or melt chocolate chips with cream or milk or something to keep it liquid-y.

So, here they are. Not very pretty. They certainly leave much to be desired in the aesthetics department. And in the texture department. And, and, and…

I guess the moral of the story is to follow directions when they are given to you. But don’t overdo it, because no one likes a brown-noser. And don’t start making up your own rules either, seeing as they most likely will not be legit and all. And one more thing… do yourself a favor, and avoid the contretemps altogether: Go to Kroger, and buy yourself a package of chocolate bark.

1. After cake is cooked and cooled completely, crumble into large bowl.
2. Mix thoroughly with 1 can cream cheese frosting. (It may be easier to use fingers to mix together, but be warned it will get messy.)
3. Roll mixture into quarter size balls and lay on cookie sheet. (Should make 45-50. You can get even more if you use a mini ice cream scooper, but I like to hand roll them.)
4. Chill for several hours. (You can speed this up by putting in the freezer.)
5. Melt chocolate in microwave per directions on package.
6. Roll balls in chocolate and lay on wax paper until firm. (Use a spoon to dip and roll in chocolate and then tap off extra.)